If you were writing a romance novel, wouldn’t you use a different language and writing style than a historical biography? If you were writing a children’s book, wouldn’t you choose different vocabulary and illustrations than in a college textbook? And wouldn’t an article for the New England Journal of Medicine be different from one written for Popular Science or Prevention Magazine?

I have identified the following 6 different “genres” for persuasive business slideshows. I propose that different guidelines should be used to create each type of presentation. Note that this discussion is limited to persuasive presentations, excluding those strictly for training or for inspirational or informational purposes, although some elements of training and inspiration will often be included in persuasive presentations.

Live performances for a large audience:

This is what we often think of as the stereotype when we hear the word “Presentation”. There will be a speaker in front of the room, who will address an audience of between 20 and thousands of people. Most likely, there will be a projector and a large screen, although other types of visual aids may be used in addition to PowerPoint or Keynote slides. The presenter can answer questions from the audience, but most of the communication will be one-way between the speaker and the audience.

An example might be an entire staff meeting in a large conference room to learn about changes in health benefits for the coming year and encourage staff to enroll in a new program. Another example might be a 2-day introductory real estate seminar for thousands of participants, held in a hotel’s grand ballroom and taught by an out-of-town real estate expert.

Live performances for a small audience:

This type of presentation will often involve top management focused on strategic decisions, although this category would also include a small interdepartmental working group with various levels of staff meeting on a project. Another type of presentation in this category would be a sales proposal (sometimes called an interview) in response to a Request for Proposal or any other type of sales or marketing proposal that is being considered by a selected management team.

The meeting can take place in a boardroom or other small conference room. There may be a team of multiple presenters, either internal or external, and written materials will most likely be delivered to participants. The brochures could include a hard copy of the slides, charts / graphs and additional details to study, or perhaps a company brochure or a package from an outside company. If it’s an internal discussion, at least there will probably be a written agenda for the meeting.

The slides can be projected on the meeting room wall or on a small drop down screen. If the group is very small, perhaps only 2 or 3 people, the presenter may choose to sit next to them at a table and share the slides on a tablet.

While there may be a persuasive “playing field” of some kind done by the presenter (s), there will also be a lot more discussion around the table associated with this type of presentation.

“Live” Narrator Webinars:

Webinars are an extremely popular way of presenting presentations due to huge savings in travel expenses. Webinars are a standard tool in the corporate training toolbox, but are also widely used for marketing, delivery, and “educational marketing” webinar aimed at a public audience as a lead generation method. In addition, organizations can use webinars as another form of staff communication for situations like the one described above: information and persuading staff to enroll in a new benefits program.

Communication in this format is largely one-way, although well-trained webinar presenters use a wide variety of tools to elicit audience interaction. The slides used in a webinar are even more important than during a live presentation because the audience does not have a presenter on stage to watch. The presenter also has far fewer feedback from the audience to know if they are still engaging in the webinar content.

Conclusions for live performances:

Each of these types of presentations has slightly different requirements to meet the needs of the audience in that specific environment. But generally, whenever a speaker or narrator shares spoken information, they want to limit the amount of text on the slides so that the audience can focus on listening to the speaker without trying to read at the same time, something the human brain cannot. He is doing very well.

It is also a good idea to stick to one idea per slide. In this way, the audience does not anticipate something different than what you are talking about at the moment. “One idea per slide” It also means that you will change the slides more frequently and that helps to keep the audience more engaged.

Slides work best when they support what the speaker is saying, not replace or duplicate it. Instead of putting so much text on your slides, try filling them with a large image related to the topic of each particular slide. This will enhance the audience’s ability to hear and absorb the spoken message by helping them simultaneously process the information in the visual channel of their brains.

It’s also important to carefully plan your presentation before you start creating slides. Make sure you have the correct amount of information for the duration of your presentation. Most people can only process 3-4 main ideas in a typical 30-45 minute presentation.

Find a way to structure your content and make that structure clear to your audience, helping them keep track of where you are in the presentation. This keeps them more engaged and they don’t wonder how many more slides they need to see. It can also help them summarize and process all the new information so that they are in a better position to make a decision on any offer in the end.